Kodevember Day 5: Should You Submit A Talk To DjangoCon US?

Published: 2018-11-06 01:25

I missed yesterday. 😭 However, the show must go on. So, today I want to talk about submitting talks to DjangoCon US.

In my role as the DEFNA North American Ambassador (#NorAmGT), I’m at a lot of conferences. I’ve often seen a talk I thought would be useful for the DjangoCon US audience to hear, and suggested that the speaker consider submit it when our CFP is open. Here’s one of the more common things I hear in response:

Kojo, I don't do a lot of Django...

This sort of confused me at first, but it’s caused me to realize we need to do a better job of explaining what we’re usually looking for in DjangoCon US talks. SPOILER: it’s NOT just Django talks. So, first I’ll describe Django, then I’ll point out the various areas you could cover in a talk.

Django is an open source web application framework, written in Python.

So, I’ll break that down into sections, starting from the end and working towards the front.

Written in Python

Django is written in Python. So, most talks using or about Python are relevant. Even if you’re doing an introductory tutorial, you’re going to be using Python. So, any new features or behavior someone wants to add to a Django app are going to use Python. As a result, Python talks (even if they’re NOT Django specific) have been and are welcome.

Web Application Framework

If you’re building a thing with Django, it’s almost definitely for the web. So, talks on lots of web-related topics are and have been accepted. We’ve had talks on JavaScript frameworks and vanilla JavaScript. I’m PRETTY sure we’ve had talks on HTML and CSS (I’d imagine focusing on new things in HTML5 and CSS3), but I’m too lazy to look it up. We’ve also had talks on general front-end design and UI/UX. I’d also imagine us having talks on general application design or web application design or best practices.

Open Source

As an open source project, Django is built and maintained by a community of volunteers. And as it was pointed out at DjangoCon US this year by Carlton, Your Web Framework Needs You. The work needed to make sure Django is updated and released is being done almost exclusively by volunteers. And THAT means we need to help our fellow community members remain as healthy as possible. So, talks on how to help our community members take care of themselves (mental health, avoiding burnout, dealing with life issues and life status changes) have been and will be welcome. And since a larger community means more volunteers to help share the load, we need to work to make sure our community culture remains as welcoming and inclusive as possible. Talks on improving and maintaining community culture have been and are also welcome.

Conclusion

So, in addition to talks on Django, talks in any of the above broad areas are welcome and valuable at DjangoCon US. They don’t ALL have to be Django specific talks.

That’s all I’ve got for now. I just wanted to share those thoughts, as they’ve been on my mind for quite some time.